Let me get this straight. I get to hear quite often about how you don't want your tax dollars spent on a long list of items but this is OK? Go ahead and explain to me why a single tax dollar of mine should fund any of this.
This idea that the other side isn't here to defend itself is ridiculous as well. When did this EVER halt a conversation here? You want the other side here? Invite them.
Otherwise, we can look at the actual investigation they reference in the clip:
Huffington Post article.
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Also paid for with taxpayer dollars are a plethora of events, programs, and schemes that violate not only the Constitution, but, in many cases, the regulations on federal government contractors, specifically the regulation prohibiting federal government contractors receiving over $10,000 in contracts a year from discriminating based on religion in their hiring practices.
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What prompted this interest in DoD spending on religion was finding out what the DoD was spending on certain individual events and programs, such as the $125 million spent on the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and its controversial “Spiritual Fitness” test, a mandatory test that must be taken by all soldiers.
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what MRFF is looking at does not include chaplains or chapels — not even the excessive spending on extravagant “chapels” like the $30,000,000 mega-church at Fort Hood, or the “Spiritual Fitness” centers being built on many military bases as part of what are called Resiliency Campuses. The examples below are all strictly from DoD contracts, with the funding coming out of the appropriations for things like “Operations and Maintenance” and, somehow, “Research and Development."
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One concert series that stands out, both because soldiers were punished last year for not attending one of the concerts and because of the cost of hiring the musical acts, is the “Commanding Generals’ Spiritual Fitness Concert Series” at Fort Eustis and Fort Lee in Virginia. This is not a chapel concert series, but a command sponsored “Spiritual Fitness” program, paid for with DoD contracts.
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The total amount of money awarded so far for this concert series, including the amount remaining on Blanket Purchase Agreements and Indefinite Delivery Contracts, is $678,470. This figure is only for the performers fees, and does not include all the other expenses associated with putting on concerts on the scale of those being held at these Army posts.
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According to an Army spokesperson on the Pentagon Channel, the Army’s Strong Bonds program receives at least $30 million a year in DoD funding. This program of pre- and post-deployment retreats for soldiers and their families are often evangelical Christian retreats, many held at Christian camps and resorts, with evangelical Christian speakers and entertainers.
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The site regularly used by Fort Sill, for example, is Oakridge Camp & Retreat Center, which has received over $500,000 in DoD contracts and has hosted approximately 60 retreats. Oakridge not only requires its employees to be Christians, but even goes as far as requiring on its employment application that the applicant state their views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. While a private religious organization is free to impose a religious test on its staff, it is quite a different matter for a DoD contractor to do this. And, in the case of Oakridge, it is not only the facility’s staff who must adhere to the its Christian beliefs, but all of its guests as well, including the soldiers attending Fort Sill’s Strong Bonds and Spiritual Fitness retreats.
For example, the first paragraph of Oakridge’s “Policies & Guidelines” for its guests states: “Oakridge is a private Christian retreat center, not a hotel. Therefore, there may be some guidelines and policies that may not seem ‘hotel-like.’ This is our purposeful intent. Oakridge does not serve the ‘general public,’ but only those interested in a Christian camp perspective.” Moreover, guest groups must attend an “Oakridge Orientation,” and it is stated in the “Policies & Guidelines” that “prayer will be offered for all groups at every meal in Jesus’ name.”
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As an example from another branch of the military, over $120,000 in DoD contracts have been awarded to the Williamsburg Christian Retreat Center, one of the facilities used by both the Army and the Navy for retreats. Another popular site in Virginia for the Navy’s Spiritual Fitness and “Personal Growth” retreats is the Peninsula Baptist Association’s Eastover Retreat Center, which has received $75,000 in DoD contracts. For its retreats in Rhode Island, the Navy also uses a Baptist facility, the American Baptist Church’s Canonicus Camping and Conference Center, which has received $53,000 in DoD contracts.
In addition to the constitutional issue of these military retreats being evangelical Christian retreats, any of the Christian facilities used for these retreats that receives over $10,000 in DoD contracts is in violation of the prohibition on federal government contractors discriminating based on religion in their hiring practices. They all hire only Christians, and many require in their employment applications that potential employees subscribe to a “statement of faith” and provide their Christian “testimony,” detailing when and how they were “saved.”
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Quail Ministries, a Christian music ministry that provides performances “liberally seasoned with songs, stories, and anecdotal Scripturally-based lessons,” has received over $84,000 in DoD contracts for performances at about a dozen Strong Bonds retreats.
Unlimited Potential, Inc., a ministry “Serving Christ Through Baseball” by sending evangelical Christian major league baseball players to military events, received over $80,000 in DoD contracts for just two retreats, one Strong Bonds retreat and one Spiritual Fitness retreat. Unlimited Potential has been at many other military bases for various other events that do not show up in DoD contracts, presumably because these appearances were paid for with base funds.
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Military children are also heavily targeted, both here in the U.S. and on bases overseas. Evangelizing the children of service members is one of the largest areas of spending.
The biggest ministry contracted by the DoD to target children is Military Community Youth Ministries (MCYM), whose mission statement is “Celebrate life with military teens, Introduce them to the Life-Giver, Jesus Christ, And help them become more like Him.” MCYM has received $12,346,333 in DoD contracts since 2000. One of MCYM’s tactics? Stalking “unchurched” military children by following their schools buses.
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Ranking second is Cadence International, with over $2,671,603 in contracts since 2003. Cadence describes itself as “an evangelical mission agency dedicated to reaching the military communities of the United States and of the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ.” Cadence not only targets young service members and military children for conversion to evangelical Christianity, but also actively tries to convert members of foreign militaries in the countries where they operate under DoD contracts.
__________________But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
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